Federal prosecutors have charged a 23-year-old Milwaukee man, Samy Mohamed Hamzeh, with unlawfully possessing a machine gun and receiving and possessing firearms not registered to him.
According to the FBI’s affidavit, a tip received last September led them to uncover Hamzeh’s plans to travel to Israel in October, with the aim of attacking Israeli soldiers and civilians in the West Bank. But “family, financial and logistic reasons” led the hapless Hamzeh to abandon those plans, so he refocused his efforts on a domestic attack.
Hamzeh discussed his plans extensively with two FBI informants; it had started recording his conversations in October.
The two informants accompanied Hamzeh to a gun range on January 19, 2016, practicing pistol-shooting practice after which they toured a Masonic temple in Milwaukee that the affidavit did not identify.
Mason belong to a fraternal organization known for carrying out charity work, and meet in lodges much the way fraternity members meet in a frat house. Wisconsin has nearly 11,000 Masons and 180 lodges, according to Frank Struble, grand master of Free and Accepted Masons in Wisconsin, who spoke with the Associated Press. The organization is not a religion.
Once he abandoned his plan to kill Israelis in the West Bank, Hamzeh decided to storm a Masonic temple with a machine gun and kill at least 30 people, federal agents said Tuesday, after his arrest.
“I am telling you, if this hit is executed, it will be known all over the world … all the Mujahedeen will be talking and they will be proud of us,” Hamzeh boasted to his informer/co-conspirators, according to the affidavit. “Such operations will increase in America, when they hear about it. The people will be scared and the operations will increase. … This way we will be igniting it. I mean we are marching at the front of the war.”